1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to computer architecture. In particular, the invention relates to multi-master systems.
2. Description of Related Art
In a typical microprocessor system, a common bus is used to interface to the central processing unit (CPU), program memory, data memory, peripheral devices, direct memory access (DMA) controller, and other bus masters or slaves. In this traditional single bus system, only one master can use the bus at a time.
One technique to improve bus utilization is cycle stealing. Cycle stealing allows a master to steals some cycles from another master that is controlling the bus. This technique avoids bus monopoly by a master. However, the technique is limited to the maximum bandwidth of a single bus and requires extra circuit to provide cycle stealing operations.
Therefore, there is a need to have a technique to provide efficient bus accesses in a multi-master system.